Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time ~Oswald Chambers

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Made It!

Well, we made it all the way to Guangzhou. Accessing blogger has been a little tricky but hopefully I'll be able to post without too much trouble.

The kids did great on the flight over even with our momentous start. We left the house at 6 am and weren't down the road 5 minutes before one of them got sick and needed us to pull over. Ended up being just a bad case of nerves (which is completely understandable). From that point on things went pretty smoothly. They loved flying and considering their first plane trip EVER was going to take them to the other side of the world, we were very impressed with how they did. The endless movies, video games, and drive by snack cart made spending 14 hours in a confined space tolerable.

Maneuvering through airport securtiy had some memorable moments of its own. Michael was pulled aside by a security guard in Raleigh for having pound cake muffins stuffed in his sweatshirt. (I actually put them there as our hands were full with luggage and assured him that no one would say anything. Oops. My bad. Sorry buddy.)

And then in Beijing, Scott was questioned for having playdough in a carry on. The guards had never seen anything like it before and spent a few minutes sniffing it and poking it. If I had thrown some cookie cutters in there they could have gone to town. :) One of them finally asked him, "You have kids?" He said yes and that was the end of that.

Had we been able to keep moving once in Beijing we would have been fine. But we waited 5 hours for our next flight and by the time they were calling us to board we were all exhausted. We finally arrived at our hotel at 1 in the morning, had to do some reorganizing as we aren't in adjoining rooms as we had thought we would be, and 32 hours after we started our great adventure we fell into bed.

I can't thank you all enough for your prayers. We know we are being prayed for and see Him at work already. The greatest part of the trip so far was watching the kids' expressions as we took off from Raleigh on their first plane ride ever. You could see their fears surrender to trust and from that point on it was pure joy for them.

Isn't that the way it always is when we walk by faith?

We will spend today exploring the area and then tomorrow at 2:30 (1:30 EST) we get our girl!

Dear Taylors,I miss you guys! Wow Michael! You and Alex will be overrun by girls! 4 of them! Tee hee! Girls rock! Hoping that you will be able to get Lily quickly, and that I can come soon to see her!Miss you all!Rachel